ObamaCare is pushing this country over the cliff and into the abyss of socialized medicine.

Legislation of this magnitude always has many unintended consequences. The devil is always in the details. Recent revelations should be sobering to any reasonable person.

A July 28 New York Times article said the Association of American Medical Colleges is warning that we are faced with an unprecedented shortage of doctors at a time when baby boomers are starting to swell waiting rooms. They estimated that the country will have 62,900 fewer doctors by 2015 and a shortage of more than 100,000 doctors by 2025.

Researchers at the Mayo Clinic reported in August that they found that 45.8 percent of the 7,288 doctors they surveyed claimed at least one symptom of burnout. Crushing workloads, mountains of paperwork and the need to compensate for falling reimbursement rates have lead to emotional exhaustion and feelings of depersonalization toward patients.

Soon, ObamaCare will add tens of millions more to the patient load, which will certainly accelerate and deepen this unavoidable crisis.

A Physician Attitudes Survey from June 2012 conducted by the Doctor Patient Medical Association also disclosed truths that are equally disturbing. In the key findings, it was revealed that 83 percent of the doctors surveyed said they are thinking about leaving their profession. Another finding was that 65 percent of the doctors said government involvement was to blame for their problems..

It is inevitable that politically selected governmental bureaucrats will decide who will receive care, along with when and how. If you have a severe medical emergency in the middle of the night, how will it be determined whether you get the treatment you need if that decision is taken out of the hands of the hospital, your doctor and your family, and given to a group of politically connected bureaucrats?

Socialized medicine has been an abysmal failure around the world wherever it has been implemented. It is worth remembering that the 2,000-plus-page monstrosity that is ObamaCare was forced on the majority of the American people against their will. This occurred during the first two years of the Obama presidency, when the Democrats controlled the House and the Senate; not one Republican voted for it. The trouncing the Democrats took in the 2010 midterm elections was the price they paid at the time for their heavy-handedness.

The leftist utopian ideal — everyone can have unlimited access to health care at less cost and that the system will be flawlessly executed by benevolent bureaucrats — is a fantasy. Within a short time, that will turn into a nightmare for the American people. Everyone agrees that the system has problems. The left claims that this is about social justice. What justice is there in collapsing the best health care system in the world, which is overburdened to distressing levels?

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In the DPMA survey, 80 percent of the doctors said it will be the medical professionals who are most able to solve their problems, and 70 percent said reducing government involvement would be the singe best fix for what ails our health care system.

Terminating ObamaCare, and the severe consequences associated with it, can only happen if Barack Obama is defeated in November.